how to avoid the publication trap

predatory open access publishers

Damien Belvèze

Université de Rennes

2024-12-04

Data management support for researchers
training sessions (data management, identifiers, reproducibility)
Data management plans
Data curation on ‘Recherche Data Gouv’ repository

1. predators and imposters

Elsevier has built up a war chest with $1.17 billion in net revenues, representing a 38% increase in sales. Researchers depend on these publishing compagnies for the quality assessment of their work. as a raw material, they yield for nothing the product of their public funded research, with which thoes compagnies will make extravagant profits by siphoning off university libraries’ finances. Or they will require research teams to pay 2 or 3 thousand dollars for so-called article processing charges in order to make their publication open access in their journals. In most of the cases, big publishing companies will make profit from both publication costs and subscriptions sold at a premium to libraries ( hybrid journals)

Elsevier, Springer, Nature, all predate public money by forcing scholars and their institutions to pay massive amounts of money to publish their papers, while the real added value, peer review process is massively done by researchers for free. They are predators, but not impersonators : in majority the papers that are submitted to these stakeholders are reviewed according to scientific standards.

2. The definition challenge

a light definition

Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices

Grudniewicz et al. (2019)

a perversion of the Gold Road open Access

Figure 3

The DOAJ specifies wether APC for a given journal will be paid, and the amount of this APC

Rise of APC model = rise of predatory open access publishers

Figure 4

2. How can we recognize predatory practices in publishers offers?

Dear wonderfull author, you’re doing an awsome job!

agressive spamming

Due to the rich knowledge shown in your previous publіcatіоn [title]
Impressed a lot by your artiсlе [title]
Since your рaреr [title] has left a deep impression on us
We are delighted to notice that your puЬliѕhed рарer [title] has brought wide attention

non-transparent peer review

very short review times : how can it be possible if the peer-review process is taken seriously
average duration of the peer review process :
- MDPI = 35 days
- Taylor & Francis, Springer, Frontiers : 78 to 122 days
MDPI CEO says they have recruited an army of secretaries to help the job being done quickly

Is MDPI too fast or the others too slow in their PR management?

acceptance rate and retraction rate

Acceptance rate : MDPI > 41-50% of all submitted articles are accepted / others > 15-20%
retraction rate : MDPI > 213 papers cited in the retraction database (but comparable retraction rates among better-regarded publishers)

Kratochvíl et al. (2020)

self-citations

is self-citation level a relevant criterium? Kratochvíl et al. (2020)

POAP mimick existing journals and metrics

false indexation in bibliographic databases: POAP mimick the standard metrics and use misleading metrics

Delgado (n.d.)

journal hijacking

the term was coined in 2012 by an iranian researcher, Mehrdad Jalalian Abalkina (2023)

usurpation of the graphic identity of a reputable journal by a journal that wants to attract either readers or authors (as in the case of Predatory open access publishers)

this does not happen only to academic journals but also to media outlets as well (see ABC news, which impersonate the brand and mimicks ABC, the famous American News media’s graphical identity.

in case this quiz would not work in the presentation, you may play it online

3. why some researchers willingly used journals considered as predatory?

Why some researchers consciously publish their results in predatory journals

:::{.incremental}{.r-fit-text} - Young Global South researchers think they are not enough experienced or equiped to publish in traditional journals Boukacem-Zeghmouri et al. (2023)¹ - Predatory open access publishers publish whatever you submit, so they make it possible to publish negative data - APC are far cheaper than in traditional journals - In some countries, PhD students need to publish their paper before their defense (race against the clock) - The quantity of publications is still too often considered at the expense of their quality (publish or perish) :::

Why it is still a bad idea

:::{.incremental}{.r-fit-text} - a publication in a predatory open access journal can be considered as a spot in your career - you may have real difficulties to recover rights on your submitted paper (republication) - the public money you gave to these scam journals should have been spent in a rigorous peer reviewing process - predatory open access publishers raise the level of distrust towards science among the public

considering this, a lot of universities (mainly from Global North), when they can prove that a publication was consciously made in a predatory journal impose sanctions against the researchers who made the publication. :::

black list / white list

Figure 6: Jeffrey Beall, author of the first POAP blacklist

black list

Beall’s list (closed)
Commercial offers : not updated, incomplete, non transparent and too expansive

white list (DOAJ, COPE, WOS, etc.)

it’s better to educate Academia where to publish rather than where to not publish

4. The grey zone

POAP a concept that protects the dominant positions of the big publishing companies ?

What the concept of predatory journals actually reveals is the deep inequalities between the scientific working conditions in countries close to the “centre” of global science, such as the UK and US, and those on its periphery

(CombattingPredatoryAcademic2022?)

the publication quality spectrum

Low quality OA journals = predatory OA journals?

Figure 8: it’s not a black and white question

inflation of special issues

inflation of special issues: - more opportunities to publish for scholars under pressure (publish or perish) - more opportunities for publishers to get APC .- peer-review standards reduced Hanson et al. (2023)

Figure 9: the strain on scientific publishing

5. The compass to publish

Compass to publish

helps you to ask the good questions about a journal (-> weighted diagnostic)
maintained by the University of Liege
available in english

Try C2P

previous tests on AJADD

figures

figure	source et crédits
Figure 1	Research Professional News
Figure 2	Shark, by yosuke muroya, CC-by-nc
Figure 3	Perrin, S. (2022, novembre 30). Beware predatory publishers! https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7380236
Figure 4	Perrin, S. (2022, novembre 30). Beware predatory publishers! https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7380236
?@fig-self_citations	Sarka Erben Johansson’s presentation on MDPI at the MUNI University 5/09/2023
Figure 7	source: Anonymous on Twitter based on Illustration by David Parkins (nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03759-y)
Figure 8	The InterAcademy Partnership. (2022). Combatting Predatory Academic Journals and Conferences—Full report. InterAcademy Partnership (IAP). https://www.interacademies.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/1.%20Full%20report%20-%20English%20FINAL.pdf

Figure 9 | Ansede, M. (2023, octobre 31). [Public funds being swallowed up by scientific journals with dubious articles](https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2023-10-31/public-funds-being-swallowed-up-by-scientific-journals-with-dubious-articles.html. EL PAÍS English.
Figure 5 | Author, A. (2022, juillet 9). Five reasons to publish in a predatory journal. Publishing with Integrity. https://predatory-publishing.com/five-reasons-to-publish-in-a-predatory-journal/ |
?@fig-Beall_list | Author, A. (2020, septembre 28). What is Beall’s List? | Why was it shut down? Predatory Journals and Conferences. https://predatory-publishing.com/what-is-bealls-list-why-was-it-shut-down/ |

software used for this presentation

Most part of the software used for this presentation are “libre” software

Quarto 1.3.450
VScode 1.8.0
Rstudio 2023.03.0
H5p
Digitale’s H5P editor (logiquiz) and board (digiboard)

Références

Abalkina, A. (2023). Predatory vs hijacked journals: A commentary to “A ‘Trojan horse’ in the reference lists: Citations to a hijacked journal in SSCI-indexed marketing journals.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 102798. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2023.102798

Boukacem-Zeghmouri, C., Pergola, L., & Castaneda, H. (2023). Profiles, motives and experiences of authors publishing in predatory journals: OMICS as a case study. https://hal.science/hal-04130294

Delgado, A. (n.d.). Fraudulent and false metric indexes. A scam for publishers and authors. Comunicar. School of Authors. Retrieved April 9, 2022, from https://www.revistacomunicar.com/wp/school-of-authors/fraudulent-and-false-metric-indexes-a-scam-for-publishers-and-authors/

Grudniewicz, A., Moher, D., Cobey, K. D., Bryson, G. L., Cukier, S., Allen, K., Ardern, C., Balcom, L., Barros, T., Berger, M., Ciro, J. B., Cugusi, L., Donaldson, M. R., Egger, M., Graham, I. D., Hodgkinson, M., Khan, K. M., Mabizela, M., Manca, A., … Lalu, M. M. (2019). Predatory journals: No definition, no defence. Nature, 576(7786, 7786), 210–212. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03759-y

Hanson, M., Gómez Barreiro, P., Crosetto, P., & Brockington, D. (2023). The strain on scientific publishing (figures) (pp. 33343265 Bytes). [object Object]. https://doi.org/10.6084/M9.FIGSHARE.24203790

Kratochvíl, J., Plch, L., Sebera, M., & Koriťáková, E. (2020). Evaluation of untrustworthy journals: Transition from formal criteria to a complex view. Learned Publishing, 33(3), 308–322. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1299

Raju, R. (2018, February 7). Predatory publishing from a global south perspective. LPC blog. https://librarypublishing.org/predatory-publishing-global-south-perspective/